


Poison

by plutosrose



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24081142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutosrose/pseuds/plutosrose
Summary: At its core, Hemlock Grove is poison.A drabble-ish collection inspired by ToWritePrompts @ Tumblr's One-Word Prompts.
Relationships: Letha Godfrey/Peter Rumancek, Roman Godfrey/Original Female Character(s), Roman Godfrey/Peter Rumancek
Kudos: 25





	1. Bullet

Roman was four years old when he learned what a bullet was. 

He remembers going to his mother, tugging on her dress, and asking her if daddy was going to get in trouble for the mess that he’d made. 

In his memory, Olivia is impossibly tall, looming over him. He remembers her taking her hand and walking back to the living room, where he’d found his father.

Olivia doesn’t scream. This doesn’t seem weird to him when he’s four, although the detail would stick in his mind for years later. 

“What is that?” he asks, holding her hand tightly. He’s pointing at the tiny piece of metal by his father’s head.

“A bullet, darling.”

He isn’t sure when he pieced together that the bullet had something to do with the mess, though as he gets older, he decides that it’s when he’s four.

“Is daddy going to get in trouble?” he repeats.

Olivia regards JR with a look of disdain. It’s only when Roman is a teenager and becomes accustomed to that look that he can recognize it in his memory.

“No,” she says finally, before turning him to face away from JR’s body. “I don’t want you to worry about daddy anymore, okay?” 

He nods, remembering that he toddled away from her. Sometimes, he wonders if she thinks he’s forgotten. 

  
  



	2. Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olivia is determined to teach Roman one lesson.

Roman had always rebelled against her, even when he was very young. Olivia recalled all too clearly the time, when he was just nine years old, where he had decided to go off into the woods on his own. He’d made it as far as the abandoned trailer a few meters off their property when Norman (who she had called in a panic), had finally found him. 

If she told him not to run off (like she did that time), he would do it again, and go further. As he got older, he ignored her warnings about becoming involved with the girls in town (Olivia knew better than most the way that lust and bloodlust could become interchangeable) and the more that she tried to steer him away from cigarettes, alcohol, and other drugs that their fortune could buy, the more he seemed determined to destroy himself. 

If she was going to mold him into the emperor that she knew he rightly was, she would have to teach him one lesson that he could not undermine or rebel against. One that would make him become who he was always meant to be. 

The night that Letha had stayed with them, both Norman and Marie out of town, she and Roman had had some ridiculous argument about some half-naked cheerleader that she’d run into in the halls of their home.

Roman had stood up, towering over her now, self-possessed and cocksure. “You lost the ability to tell me what to do when Dad died,” she remembers him saying.

She took two steps closer to him, staring deep into his eyes. She knew by now that he had the power. He was Upir, just like her, but he didn’t understand it. He could hear the voices, but he couldn’t bend them to his will consistently. 

His power tried to block her out, but hers was stronger. She pushed past the resistance he gave her, and settled deep inside his mind. “Letha is upstairs,” she said, careful to plant the thought in his mind. Olivia had learned a long time ago that the more extreme an action was, the more care it required so that it would not disturb any other thoughts in a person’s mind. “Go to her. Take her, my darling. Make her yours.”

Roman’s shoulders, which he tended to bend forward when he was angry or upset, went slack. He started to walk toward the stairs, before Olivia stopped him. 

She placed a hand against his cheek and smiled. “Oh my dear Roman,” she murmured. “Make sure you and Letha both dream about something nice tonight.”

Roman nodded, his brain foggy and clear as he headed up the stairs. Olivia went back into the dining room and lit a cigarette as she settled into a chair. She still had time to teach him about true heartbreak.


	3. Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christina is an author, and authors need a muse.

Even from a young age, Christina had gone everywhere with a notebook in tow. This was something that the Sworn sisters had made fun of her for doing on more than one occasion, but she didn’t care. If she was going to become a writer--a real writer, then she had to make sure that she was writing at every opportunity.

And yet, there were times where she felt as though she hadn’t experienced enough of life to write anything that was worth reading. Sometimes she would look at what she’d scribbled in her notebooks and feel shame wash over her. Who would read a romance novel written by a virgin? Who would read a murder mystery by someone who had never experienced real danger in their entire life?

One day, as she was walking into school, she felt a crisp gust of wind that guided the leaves on the steps leading into the building out of her path. The wind, on any other day wouldn’t have been interesting or remarkable in any way, if it weren’t for the fact that this sudden gust had made her look directly up - and right into the eyes of the new boy, Peter Rumancek.

From then on, he became her muse. Every boy in her stories seemed to take his form - either in appearance or what she guessed to be his personality. She couldn’t get him out of her head. 

And when she saw the pawprint in the forest for the first time, she decided that she could become him.


	4. Resurface

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman comes out of his coma. Peter has conflicting thoughts.

When Roman resurfaces from his coma, (the coma that Peter had privately thought he would never wake up from), Peter nearly feels overwhelmed by his presence. Roman had always been larger than life, but his absence over the past two weeks had caused the world to feel much slower. Days longer. 

Roman gives him a quizzical look and waves a hand in front of his face. “Does your wolfie time of the month make you lose brain cells or something?” he asks, and Peter feels a sudden impulse to shove him back.

“Shut up,” he says, running a hand through his hair, though there’s a lightness in his tone. A relief, spreading out from his chest, that Roman is not gone. The thought enters his mind that now, he is not alone. 

After a brief moment of silence (in which Roman, who was up until three seconds ago, in a coma, begins to fumble around trying to find his cigarettes), Peter finally says, “I have to do this alone.”

“Bullshit.” Roman’s large eyes are fixed on his now. “We’re in this together, Rumancek, don’t forget that.”

There’s something about the way that Roman looks at him in that moment that makes Peter wonder if Roman somehow learned what he really is while he was in that coma. And yet, at the same time, Peter can’t stop the impulse to protect him that begins to well up inside of him. 

But he can’t protect Roman, not really, he thinks, even as he decides that it’s his responsibility to face the wolf. To shed his human face. 

“It’s not your fight, Roman. It’s mine,” Peter says quietly, unable to meet Roman’s gaze. He doesn’t think that Roman will reach inside his mind and pull out an explanation, but he also doesn’t want to wait to see what will happen if he tries.

“No,” Roman refuses, and gets up, pulling clothes out from underneath the hospital bed. Roman moves gracefully, he thinks, in a way that reminds him of Letha--a thought that he tries to shake off as soon as it comes to mind.

He glances over at Roman for a moment, before his eyes widened - as Roman was very unselfconsciously undressing in front of him at the moment. 

And although he looks away quickly, he can feel Roman’s stare boring into him. “Saw something you liked?” Roman snickers - and at this point, to save any sense of normalcy, Peter picks up the pillow on the hospital bed and chucks it at him.

“Hey!” Roman laughs, and for a moment, Peter almost forgets about the vargulf, and he laughs too.

A thought suddenly floats to Peter’s mind - what would it be like if he kissed him? 

To try and distract himself, he coughs instead, forcing himself to think of Letha. “If you don’t rest and shit you’ll have...blank spots.”

“Blank spots?” 

“Yeah, coma patients get them, apparently. They don’t remember things they...should,” he says feebly. 

“I’m coming, Peter,” Roman says finally, firmly and authoritatively. 

Godfreys always get their way, Peter thinks. He could push Roman away. He could yell and scream at him and try to force him to stay in that attic room. But he knew it wouldn’t work. And not just because Godfreys get what they want - but because Roman’s pull on his life was positively supernatural.

“Fine,” Peter says after another long silence. By this point, Roman is already dressed and nearly halfway out the door. “You going to tell your mom?”

Roman shrugged. “Just blame it on a blank spot.”


	5. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Norman, Olivia is bliss.

The first time she comes to his office, it’s the winter after JR has married her. 

He can hardly take his eyes off her - it feels cliche to think it, but it’s true. Olivia is statuesque, with long, dark hair and dark eyes. At all times, she carries herself as though she is supporting the weight of a very heavy crown. It isn’t hard for Norman to imagine her as a queen.

Marie is kind, patient, and pretty, but there is something about the way that Olivia looks at him that makes him feel as though he will come undone.

It seems like an excuse, he sometimes thinks. He’s counseled plenty of men before who admitted to having struggled with infidelity. To have the same thoughts makes him feel as though he’s nothing short of a hypocrite. Sometimes, he even thinks about telling those men about what he’s done (even though it would be completely unprofessional), because he wants someone to judge him too.

“I don’t love him, Norman,” she says in her lilting accent. “JR is….”

From the way she trails off, it’s almost as though she’s trying to force him to fill in the blanks for her. Suddenly, Norman finds himself going through every memory that he has of JR and Olivia together, wondering if there was some argument - some evidence of unhappiness - that he’d ignored. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, folding his hands on his desk. He can feel the questions welling up inside of him. Is he cold? Is he distant? Does he not want children anymore? Do you not want children anymore?

She looks deep into his eyes then, perfectly manicured hands coming to caress his. “No, I don’t want to talk about it, and you don’t either.” 

His desire to talk about JR drifts away. Later on, he would chalk this incident up to the fact that having her alone, and so impossibly close, was what he really wanted. Not to dissect her anxiety and fear and possible marriage problems. 

In his memory, he isn’t sure who closes the distance first, but he remembers bending her over the desk, hiking up the skirt that he was pretty sure was worth at least a thousand dollars, and experiencing bliss with her for the first time. 

From then on, he would give himself over to bliss every time he was with her.


	6. Cruelty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman does not think he is cruel.

It is not cruel, Roman thinks, to stand at the top of the stairs when Peter comes in, after being gone for months.

It is not cruel, Roman thinks, to talk about how much he likes Peter’s mom - how she was always so different from his mom - when Peter tells her that she’s in trouble.

It is not cruel, Roman thinks, to refuse to give him the money - which to be honest, is really pocket change to him - because Peter was the one who left him first.

It is cruel, Roman thinks, for Peter to show up unannounced, to barge in the front door like he has any right to being near him.

It is cruel, Roman thinks, for Peter to ask for the money, because the moment when he needed him the most, Peter chose instead to abandon him. 

It is cruel, Roman thinks, as he watches him get back in his car, for Peter to leave him again, even though this is exactly what he asked him to do.


	7. Uncle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Norman knows Roman knows.

When Roman wakes up from his coma, Norman can tell that something has changed.

It is not that Roman carries himself with a sense of purpose that he didn’t seem to have before. It is not, even, that Roman seems to have lost interest in the pretty girls that he used to see him with around town. Or that he seems to be drinking more (Olivia had always, he thought, let Roman parent himself). 

It’s that every time Roman looks at him, he looks at him as though he can see his past. He can see every thought that he’s ever had. 

Norman begins to fear making direct eye contact with him. Later, he would chalk it up to Marie’s disappearance or Letha’s death that made him uneasy around his nephew.

But it wasn’t that. Not really. There was something unspoken in his gaze. Something that made him feel as though Roman could see all of his past transgressions.

Something that said. ‘I know you’re not my uncle.’


	8. Happiest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letha is happiest with Peter.

Letha is happiest when she’s with Peter. 

It feels cliche to think that. But it’s true. She can tell that something’s off between her mom and dad, although she can never quite put her finger on it. She is happy, sure, when she’s with Roman, but it is not the same kind of near ecstasy that she feels around Peter (and it’s not just because of the way that Peter caresses her belly and settles between her thighs, in a way that doesn’t feel like sex and does feel like worship). 

And she is much happier with him than when she thinks of the baby. Because while she’s decided that she loves this baby so very much, this little literal angel, when she thinks of the angel she feels nothing but anger. Pain. Fear.

She doesn’t stop to wonder why she could be angry or afraid or in pain when she thinks of an angel. Instead, she focuses on the happiness she feels with Peter.


	9. Bunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman likes rebelling against his mother.

Roman delighted in rebelling against his mother, even if he didn’t always know what he was rebelling over. Her treatment of Shelley? Their dad’s death? The way that she acted as though she was the Queen of Pennsylvania? 

It was the summer before senior year, and just after his eighteenth birthday that Olivia had announced that for the first time, Godfrey Industries would be putting on a modest fourth of July celebration. 

Roman did what he always did at a Godfrey party. He found a girl - this one the daughter of one of the executive vice presidents, who had long dark hair, large eyes, and had kept licking her lips when he spoke to her underneath the red, white, and blue bunting that had been draped throughout the event hall.

Then he, and this girl - Evelyn or Eva or Megan or who the fuck knows, did a line of coke in a back office that had been locked (but there was no room in Godfrey Industries that he couldn’t get into), and then he yanked her panties down and fucked her over whatever asshole in the research department the office belonged to.

After they both left the office, Roman locking it behind her, he nearly ran straight into his mother, who was cradling a glass of champagne and smiling brightly as she flitted from guest to guest. 

She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “Next time you want to fuck a whore at a company event, darling, do be a little more discrete.”

She continued to smile, although it was tight and unnatural now. 

He smirked, and bumped into her as he passed, jostling the liquid her glass. He didn’t need to come up with something witty or insult her, because he already knew that he’d gotten under her skin.


	10. College

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's fixated on the fact that Letha will never go to college.

Peter had many thoughts as they left Hemlock Grove, but one of the more bizarre - and resistant ones - was the fact that Letha would never be able to go to college.

She had talked about taking a year off when the baby was born, and he had frequently entertained the idea that he might get a job and provide for her and her baby like they deserved. 

It was weird, he thought, to be so stuck on the fact that she would never be able to go to college. Never would go, he reminded himself. 

As Hemlock Grove shrunk in the rearview mirror of his mother’s car, he wondered if it was possible to go back in time and tell Letha that she never would go to college. That instead, she would forever be stuck between the joy that she felt at welcoming her baby - her angel - into the world - and pain as the life bled out of her in the Tower.

A lot of things were possible.

He was a werewolf, after all. 

  
  



	11. Immortality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Roman has is time.

Roman has a lot of time to think about the fact that he will not die, because he had learned, shortly before he had ripped his mother’s tongue out, that he couldn’t die. 

Miranda doesn’t know that he can’t die, and it doesn’t take very much to have her wrapped around his finger. A pleasant distraction, someone to keep him company, but that’s more or less what it is. He often found himself wishing that he could just tell her that he’s the equivalent of a human-sized leech so that she might leave him.

Because she won’t believe he’s ugly.

One night, after Miranda has curled up next to him and gone to sleep, he finds himself thinking about Peter. 

Peter, he thought, would understand his ugliness. He would not try to love him.

And the next time that he sinks inside Miranda, he thinks of Peter.


	12. Carnivore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clementine, in the jaws of a carnivore.

The last thing that Clementine Chasseur thinks about as she dies, is the beautiful woman in Hemlock Grove, the one that lives in a tiny apartment full of colorful fabric that smells impossibly like spiced flowers. 

Her lips were soft, and the moment that she had settled between her thighs was pure bliss, as cliche as it sounded. 

It gives her some comfort to think about Destiny (she wonders briefly if that was her actual name and not just one she used for her work), while blood flows freely out of her neck, when she can see every exposed tendril of red muscle below her neck.

And it gives her some comfort as darkness comes for her.


	13. Stalked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashley Valentine feels as though she's being stalked.

For weeks after Roman had emerged from his coma, Ashley Valentine had felt as though she was being stalked.

There was never any real evidence that she could find to show that this was true, but she constantly felt eyes on her. As though someone or (hell, even something, she wasn’t sure), was watching.  
Hemlock Grove had always been a creepy town, but she had never felt quite as unsafe as she had then - and, bizarrely enough, she noticed the feeling got stronger whenever someone said the word ‘Godfrey.’

She couldn’t quite figure out why. She was pretty sure that she’d been a huge bitch to Roman the last time that they’d spoken, and yet, everything about him set her teeth on edge. Made her feel as though there were needles being pushed underneath her skin. 

She would just have to avoid him until graduation, she thought. But even she knew how impossible it was to actually avoid anything Godfrey in Hemlock Grove.


	14. Sauna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter tries to repress a memory of him and Roman in a sauna.

Between the vargulf and Roman’s mother and Letha - there was a moment that the two of them didn’t talk about after it had happened.

When Peter looked back on it, he wasn’t entirely sure if it had been a conscious choice to not talk about it, or if it had grown organically over time. 

But he and Roman had once visited the sauna at the expensive health club that the Godfreys frequented. “Seriously, my mom gives them so much money that they look the other way if I order wine,” Roman had said, and Peter had tried to wrap his head around the fact that there was actually such a thing as a health club and such a thing as a health club that served wine.

It had happened pretty quickly, when he thought back on it - the two of them had been in the sauna, towels wrapped around their waists, when Roman had leaned in and kissed him.  
Peter didn’t remember him saying anything, but he did remember the way that he licked his lips, as though he was issuing a challenge. 

And Peter, well, he had never been one to ignore a challenge.

Without hesitation, he had grabbed Roman’s face and pressed his mouth against his, prying it open with his tongue. 

And then, well, if he hadn’t put it out of his mind, he would have never been able to look Roman in the eye properly again.

Because Roman, grinning widely and wickedly, delicately unwrapped his towel, and sunk to his knees in front of him.

“Shit,” Peter remembered saying, over and over again - and only partially because he was convinced that someone was going to barge in and call his mother. 

No one ever barged in, but that didn’t mean that he had ever bothered to properly deal with the memory.


	15. Clutch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lynda loves her son, even when he makes mistakes.

Lynda held her son’s hand tightly in her own as she drove them both away from Hemlock Grove. As much as she wanted, many times, to tell him that she was right, that he should have stayed away from the Godfreys, that they had ruined their lives, she loved her son more than anything in the world. He had a good heart. He just wanted to save people. He never gave a thought to himself.

In a way, she was proud of his selflessness, and in another way, she was confident it was going to get him in even more trouble than he’d already found. 

“It will be okay,” she said, letting go as they passed through another town. 

“Yeah,” Peter muttered.

“It will be,” she lied.


End file.
